FUGITIVE GANG ENFORCER ARRESTED IN PUSH-IN ROBBERIES IN BRONX

A drug-gang enforcer who had been on the United States Marshals
Service's 15 most wanted list since April was arrested yesterday in
connection with several home invasion robberies in the Bronx last summer.

Law enforcement officials described the man, Maxwell Bogel, 38, as a
particularly vicious criminal who used sexual assault as an extortion
tactic while he was an enforcer for the Shower Posse, once the most
feared drug gang in the Bronx. He would kidnap the families of those
who owed the gang money and, often holding them for more than a day,
repeatedly rape and sodomize the girls in the families until the money
was paid, investigators said.

In 1998, he was sentenced in absentia to 68 years to life for
kidnapping, rape and robbery.

Mr. Bogel was arrested early yesterday at an apartment building in
Brooklyn after law enforcement officials received a tip.

A police spokesman said that he committed four armed robberies in July
and August and that in one, a victim was left paralyzed.

Deputy Marshal Matt Healey said yesterday that even among drug gang
enforcers, Mr. Bogel was "one of the worst we've seen" because he used
the rape of children as leverage.

Mr. Bogel, a short, stocky Jamaican native, has been under
investigation since January 1999 by the High Intensity Drug
Trafficking Area, a task force of the United States Marshals Service
and the New York Police Department.

Even though the Shower Posse, so named because they showered their
victims with bullets, disbanded, Mr. Bogel remained an active drug
dealer, officials said.

Law enforcement officials, who have been tracking Mr. Bogel up and
down the East Coast over the last three years, painted a portrait of a
violent and shadowy figure who was constantly on the move but always
returned to the 47th Precinct in the Bronx, where he still has family.

Soon after the push-in robberies last summer, investigators staked out
a block party that Mr. Bogel was expected to attend near White Plains
Road and 241st Street, but gunfire and pandemonium erupted and
investigators were unable to catch him. One man was killed in the
shooting and several others, including a 2- year-old, were injured.

In 1998, Mr. Bogel was on trial in Bronx Supreme Court with another
defendant, charged with kidnapping a young man and his girlfriend
because he believed they had stolen from him, an investigator said.
The authorities said in court papers that Mr. Bogel and his accomplice
tied up the man and pistol-whipped him and then took turns raping and
sodomizing the woman at gunpoint over the course of a night.

During the trial, investigators said, Mr. Bogel, who was free on
$100,000 bail, committed two more attacks, raping and sodomizing a 12-
year-old and a 14-year-old, both in front of their families. The
investigator said Mr. Bogel had heard that detectives were questioning
people in his neighborhood about the attacks and fled before he could
be convicted.

Mr. Bogel is wanted on unspecified charges in Virginia, the police
said.